little sailing boats that went tacking past our bows on their way to
Norfolk.

It was a pretty scene, but there was one drawback to it all. Everything
showed the season so far advanced, and served to remind us of the
lateness of our start. We had intended to take our little voyage on the
James in the springtime. It had been a good deal a matter of sentiment;
but sentiment will have its way in houseboating. We had wished to begin
in that gentle season when the history of the river itself began, and
when the history of this country of ours began with it.

For, whatever may have gone before, the real story of the James and of
America too commences with the bloom of the dogwood some three hundred
years ago, when from the wild waste of the Atlantic three puny,
storm-worn vessels (scarcely more seaworthy than our tub of a
houseboat) beat their way into the sheltering mouth of this unknown
river.

That was in the days when the nations of Europe were greedily
contending for what Columbus had found on the other side of the world.
In that struggle England was slow to get a foothold. Neglect,
difficulty, and misfortune made her colonies few and short-lived. By the
opening of the seventeenth century Spain and France, or perhaps Spain
alone, seemed destined to possess the entire new hemisphere. In all the
extent of the Americas, England was not then in possession of so much
as a log fort. Apparently the struggle was ended and England defeated.
No one then could have imagined what we now behold--English-speaking
people possessing most and dominating all of that newfound Western
World.